


heart not giving in

by resentfully



Category: Monster - Red Velvet - Irene & Seulgi (Music Video), Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:27:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28146084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resentfully/pseuds/resentfully
Summary: “It isn’t something that magic can fix,” Irene told her once. Dusk bruising the shadows red and violet; they seemed to slink a little too close to Irene, considering the source of the light. “It’s only the payoff for the rest of it.” She smiled, then, the expression too distant to be reassuring. “You know that magic demands balance. I taught you that.”
Relationships: Bae Joohyun | Irene/Kang Seulgi
Comments: 12
Kudos: 44
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	heart not giving in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merryofsoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryofsoul/gifts).



> happy holidays, merryofsoul! i hope you enjoy <3

These days Irene’s skin is always cold to the touch. Seulgi keeps the candles and braziers in every room perpetually lit; fire magic was the first she learned and it takes next to no effort maintaining the few hundred tiny golden pinpoints clustered along the tables and mantels. But none of it shifts the shock of the chill when Seulgi’s palm finds Irene’s wrist or the curve of Irene’s waist or the dip between Irene’s shoulderblades, like briefly submerging her hand in ice water. 

Irene claims not to feel it, though more often than not Seulgi finds her drifting through the corridors in one of her somnambulist spells with shawls and blankets piled over her shoulders, webbing in the warmth. “It isn’t something that magic can fix,” Irene told her once. Dusk bruising the shadows red and violet; they seemed to slink a little too close to Irene, considering the source of the light. “It’s only the payoff for the rest of it.” She smiled, then, the expression too distant to be reassuring. “You know that magic demands balance. I taught you that.”

If Seulgi could bear it for Irene she would, without blinking. The cold, the periods where lucidity slips away from Irene and her eyes turn flat and alien and she looks at Seulgi as though Seulgi is a stranger, all of it. But the kind of magic that would allow her to take the cost of Irene’s power as her own is beyond her understanding, and Irene will never teach her. 

When Seulgi returns from the garden there’s a tisane steeping and steaming in a small pot on the kitchen counter, clearly forgotten. Seulgi tips the liquid out into a porcelain cup, the spicy fragrance of ginger and dried plum uncurling from the surface, and sets off in search of Irene. 

This time Irene’s in the library. A few grimoires are spread out on the table before her, the pages filled with indecipherable runes in Irene’s neat, slanted handwriting. “Unnie, you’re shivering,” Seulgi says. She presses the cup into Irene’s hands, then tugs off her jacket and drapes it over Irene’s shoulders. 

Candlelight sends shadows crawling over the planes of Irene’s face as she glances up at Seulgi. Counterpoint: something flickers underneath, that ancient horror stirring. The demon that lives in Irene’s skin sleeps lightly, cracks open an eye whenever Irene calls on her magic. 

"Thank you," Irene says softly, clutching at the hems of Seulgi's jacket. In the periphery of Seulgi’s vision one of the shadows peels away from the wall, shivering, and inches towards Irene like a skittish cat; Irene draws everything towards her. Something else Irene told her once: _You asked me to stay. You saw what I was and you asked me to stay. Nobody has ever asked me to stay before._ An absurd whole-body longing swells up in Seulgi. Unable to speak, Seulgi nods and leaves her to her study.

In Seulgi’s mind Irene is always in her garden, walking through the hellebore and nightshade. Flowers at her feet, silver sparkling at her fingertips, sun in her hair. As the nights lengthen Irene leaves the house less and less often, so Seulgi takes over the menial tasks of caring for the plants, harvesting roots and vegetables and blooms, hanging up bunches of herbs to dry over the kitchen windowsill. It's a meditative process, being out in the garden, even if today she's only pinning out linen to dry. Nostalgia rises easily to the surface like sediment disturbed from a riverbed, dislocating memories of her old self. It’s a little like looking through a glass pane into somebody else’s life, though logically she understands the girl in her memories to be herself. She views that time with a submerged sense of detachment, the dampening of sound through water. She doesn’t know much of Irene’s history, but she can imagine what it must have been like, Irene alone in this sprawling house for so long, separated from the rest of the world.

When Irene had shown up on her doorstep years ago Seulgi’s vision had bisected itself. There was the girl in the white dress politely asking to borrow a kitchen scale if Seulgi had one, and like a double-exposed photograph there was something else, something indescribably old and indescribably powerful coiled around her. Seulgi couldn't help but stare, and Irene's gaze had sharpened, diamond acuity, knowing instantly that Seulgi had seen. She'd invited Seulgi to come with her. But first, Seulgi had invited her in. Asked her to stay.

“It’s a symbiosis,” Irene explained, in those earliest days, sitting crosslegged in the wildflowers with Seulgi. “The more magic you use, the more it becomes part of you. Eventually you won’t be able to live without it. But in return—” She opened a fist. In the heart of her palm a round black berry softened and elongated itself, needlelike purple petals unfurling around a yellow centre to form a five-pointed star. “Anything you want in the world is yours.” She transferred the flower to Seulgi’s waiting hands. “You can still leave, you know. It isn’t too late for you. I can take you back home if you want.”

What Seulgi wanted was to stay with Irene for as long as she could. “What about you?” Seulgi asked. 

Irene cracked a rueful smile. “It was too late for me when I was born,” she said. “I’m only a vessel for what’s inside me.” 

“You’re you,” Seulgi said firmly. Irene turned her face away, then. 

Now: a prickle over the back of Seulgi's neck as she shakes out a pillowcase and clips it to the clothesline. Seulgi twists around, sees, past the white billow of sheets, the indistinct sun-blotted blur of Irene’s silhouette at the window. She waves.

For a moment the outline of the figure distorts, something with too many limbs straining at the barrier of the skin from beneath, sharp and roiling jut of angles that freezes Seulgi’s breath at the base of her stomach. Then it settles back into Irene’s slight frame. Lifts a hand in return.

Seulgi turns back to her laundry basket. Heart an unwrung washcloth. Its burden a heavy knot in her chest.

Sometime past midnight Seulgi’s roused from sleep when the mattress shifts. Blearily, she grinds the heel of her palm into her eyes and pushes herself up. It’s bright in the bedroom; Seulgi’s grown accustomed to sleeping with the candles still lit, anything to let Irene accrue just a little more warmth. If Irene’s sleepwalking again, it’s better to let her be and come back on her own. But Irene is only sitting upright on the edge of the mattress, unmoving, head bent. The dark curtain of her hair blocking her from view.

“What is it?” Seulgi says, alert now. She moves forward, touches Irene on the shoulder, slips an arm around her waist. “Unnie—”

Irene’s face disappears into the cradle of her palms. “I don’t know how much longer I can stay like this,” she mumbles. 

This isn’t a conversation that should be carried out in the light. Seulgi extinguishes the candles with the flick of a hand, and for the first time in months the room goes dark. Only the careless spill of moonlight through the window filamenting Irene’s hair in silver. A sculptural aspect to her, here in the bed, the stillness of something not quite alive. Seulgi swallows down the ache in her throat. “What do you mean?”

“I can’t change back,” Irene says. She drops her hands. The stiff line of her shoulders draws upwards towards her ears. “Every time I use my magic I can feel—” 

The girl from Seulgi’s memories on one side of the threshold and the beautiful monster on the other but even then, even a world away from the person she is now, Seulgi had invited Irene in. Seulgi has always known what Irene is. More than that: she has never been afraid. The demon in Irene’s skin is still Irene. Not so much a metamorphosis as a return.

“You aren’t changing,” Seulgi says. “This is who you always were, isn’t it?”

Irene laughs wetly. “I guess so.” 

She reaches out, and Seulgi leans forward, helpless to resist the magnetic pull of Irene’s demand. The weight of her heart trembles behind her breastbone; steadies. Irene fits one hand and then the other around the curve of Seulgi’s jaw. Her palms are so cold they almost burn, like iron, but the pressure of her fingers is gentle, and Seulgi doesn’t flinch. Only meets the familiar gaze, the vulnerable mouth. In the twist of moonlight Irene’s skin shines almost violet. 

“Then I’ll stay with you,” Seulgi says. “Until the end.”


End file.
